Organizations across the world are showing a strong preference for outsourcing vendors to develop and support their IT function. The Deloitte ‘Global Outsourcing Survey’ report also reflects this trend – currently enterprises outsource their 72% of their IT functions, but plan to increase it by 31%. However, not all segments are thinking of outsourcing.

A September 2018reserach by The Manifest shows that about one-third of businesses (32%) that do not use a digital marketing agency plan to outsource their digital marketing efforts in the next year.  Most companies outsource the digital marketing resources for search engine marketing, for which they do lack the knowledge and expertise.

The business uses the in-house staff on content marketing. However, having an in-house team takes time and effort, which many companies cannot afford. More and more organizations want to outsource their UX/UI design, SEO, content marketing, PPC, email marketing, video production, social media, and public relations to agencies, for the assured returns on money and time.

Here, we explore some of the top reasons why companies should outsource their digital marketing efforts.  

1. Ready access to a qualified and experienced digital marketing team:

You need a dedicated team of digital marketing professionals comprising strategist, researcher, analyst, SEO expert, campaign experts, content writer to come up with winning marketing strategies for success. However, setting up a team for digital marketing activities is a time-consuming and costly affair.

You might be a fashion apparel store owner in a city mart or you may be running a beauty spa that offers hair care services for women. You might require a regular online presence at a low-cost package all over the year, and seasonal campaigns. Maintaining a team of strategy, content, design, branding, lead generation, and ad campaign managers is not only expensive but also difficult for you.

Therefore, hiring a digital marketing agency that takes up the job of creating the right online strategy for you is the best option. An agency already has all the resources you need for focused marketing, minus the worry of maintaining a regular team.  

2. Latest Tools and Technologies for Success:

Having access to the latest marketing tools and technologies is one of the outsource digital marketing efforts. You can have access to special tools and software for fast and accurate research, analysis and strategy, less repetitive activities, faster implementation, optimum ROI and faster achievement of business goals.

What is even more surprising? All of these come at no extra cost. Most digital agencies have a yearly subscription for these tools and will most likely not charge you for this.  

3. Better Business Insights and Transparency:

Hiring a good digital agency gives you transparency. With adequate resources and systems to continuously review and fine-tune the digital strategy, you may expect improved ROI. Also, they maintain transparency on the client’s investments and channels where it is being deployed.

Also, equipped with better insights, a reputed digital marketing agency will know the right digital channels for your business.  

4. Better Presence across Social Media Platforms:

Brands thrive on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Interest, and LinkedIn.  You need to have a strong social media strategy in place and a dedicated marketing team to keep track of all social media updates.

Your brand story needs to be told through blogs, posts, videos, and catchy captions. Hiring a fully-functional digital marketing agency is beneficial; it takes care of all your brand building activities. So, invest in a digital marketing agency that is more conversant with social media trends, rather than depending on in-house resources.  

5. More focused SEO Marketing:

In addition to creating a strong social media presence, a digital marketing agency can also help you grow better with effective Search Engine Optimization.  Experienced SEO professionals will research and come up with appropriate strategies for your website. With the well-thought and crafted plan, you can be assured of genuine traffic to your web pages.

With a proper analysis and regular performance monitoring, they can give you suggestions for improvement, so that you can increase your ROI.  

6. More room for Innovation:

Having an in-house team for promotional activities is good only when your marketing activities are minimal; limited to an annual general meeting or internal events.

The team will be focused more on the internal workings of the brand, rather than its external brand building stories. Having an external agency is great for brainstorming ideas for strengthening the brand image.

Being a third-party digital resource provider, they offer a fresh perspective and can come up with innovative plans for the brand building.    

7. 360° Digital Marketing:

To ensure increased traffic, better brand awareness and higher sales your brand needs to be active in multiple digital marketing and advertising platforms. For this, you need a multi-channel 360-degree digital marketing strategy.

In order to initiate digital marketing with a 360-degree approach and manage it in-house, you need a big team. Outsourcing your digital marketing efforts to a digital marketing agency is a faster and better option, saving both time and money.  

8. Assured ROI:

Hiring a digital marketing agency ensures that your funds will be invested properly. Being experts in marketing, they can focus on conversion.  They spend the time to ensure that you get the results you paid for. This helps you save on time and money while growing your business with experts.  

9. More Focus for your Core Business:

Outsourcing digital marketing to an external agency saves you time and energy so that you focus on your core business. Enterprises today are opting for outsourcing non-core activities to third parties. With the right information and tools in place, a digital marketing agency can plan, develop and execute on strategies that yield results.

While the experts are engaged in executing the promotional plans for your business, you get enough time to focus on other key areas o your business.

10. More Cost-effective:

Last, but not least, cost is one of the most important reasons to outsource your digital marketing efforts. If you are planning to set up a digital marketing team, you must find the right people with the right expertise for research, design, copywriting, development, and PR, analytics, etc. In addition, you have to set aside money for their salary, benefits, salary taxes and any additional expenses that come with bringing on a new employee.

Also, you must not miss out on the time and money it takes to recruit, hire, and train that individual or multiple new team members.   In contrast, hiring an agency takes away all the worries of recruiting, maintaining, or training a team. Also, you may negotiate and go for marketing plans or hire outsource marketing professionals, as and when required.

Outsourcing digital marketing efforts ensure faster and better results in minimum price. Choose a reputed digital marketing agency and closely analyze its portfolio before hiring. Read my earlier post on key considerations for hiring freelancers. Pixel Solutionz is backed by a team of expert digital marketing executives that can provide you end-to-end digital marketing solutions for your business needs. Hire our dedicated digital marketing team and take your business to a new height. Want to share some thoughts? Let us know.  

Speed and agility are two primary requirements companies look to deliver services. However, it is fairly difficult to find a highly-skilled, outsourcing services company who delivers within the budget and meets the deadline.  

1. 
   

   Check out their Core Competency

Always look for an outsourcing product development company has specialized expertise in your desired area. Look up for their previous projects and success record your domain. Also, check if the outsourcing company has some dedicated process of value-addition or not. How skilled are the resources?

Whether it is rapid prototyping from startup concept to development or enterprise CMS and business intelligence tools, in-depth knowledge is a must. A responsive software developer should be able to pivot and align their skills with your core strategic objectives.  

2. 
   

   Find out about the Project Delivery Process

Now, that you have a clear understanding of the team’s core competency, it is time to find about their project management and delivery process. For this, you should request for project-specific information prior to the execution phase. You may ask the outsourcing partner, the following questions:

• Project scope details
• What to expect? (as end solution)
• Time frame or deadline
• Project reporting & analysis
• Costing and budgetary requirements

3. 
   

   Know about their Customer Service

Often looked, but one of the key things to mind while choosing an outsourcing partner is to find out about their customer service. To do this, analyze their online reputation by checking out customer ratings, reviews, authentic testimonials, and social media posts. Also, you may ask some reliable online review service, social network, or friends to give you experienced-based opinion.

However, one must keep in mind that many fraudulent companies use paid tricks, sponsored reviews, and testimonials to present themselves as a reliable service provider. Checking responsiveness throughout your pre-hiring process gives you some idea about their whereabouts.  

4. 
   

   Know about their Development Methodologies

You may be a technology startup trying to find your feet or you may be representing a core team member of a big corporate house, you must always ask about the development methodologies followed by the outsourcing partner company. You may have a small team with an expanding niche, your product’s maturity, ideal customer profile, and product-market fit all factor into the decision-making process.

Ensure that your product development company understands lean methodologies, market needs, trendy practices, and your business needs. Check out their previous samples and user profiles to understand their level of expertise in particular technologies.

5. 
   

   Best Practices

Most IT solutions providers and consultancies provide a variety of methodologies and frameworks to engage your project successfully. Ensure that the prospect service provider follows a structured project management methodology (Agile, Hybrid, and Scrum) with an integrated quality assurance process.

The product development firm you select should be able to provide visibility and keep you updated on the development process and implementation phases. Remember that consistent communication and reporting that ensures good results.  

6. 
   

   Terms and Conditions

Perhaps the most rarely read page ever on a company website is the terms and conditions page. Most of us forget that all companies lay down their product development cycle, terms and conditions, and transparency policy under this most neglected section. Please make sure that you have thoroughly read all the terms and conditions, well in advance before signing on the dotted lines.

Take time. Ensure that the technology outsourcing partner is using an agile methodology to develop the software product and ensures transparent communication of everything on time. Find out about the cycle of status reports, financial transactions, testing, and releases.  

7. Maintenance and Support

Most important of all, the outsourcing partner for product development should be able to provide maintenance and support after product or app development. You may find, after the regular QA, have some issues with the application in extensive use. You must include this after-sale service in the long-term contract (which may add a few bucks to the budget) but will ensure timely support after the sale.

The above points will help you find the right outsourcing partner for your business needs. Of course, there are no codified rules for hiring the right product development company for outsourcing. The guidelines may be modified or altered at your convenience. Read my earlier post on key considerations for hiring freelancers.

Pixel Solutionz is backed by a team of outsourced product development experts that can provide you with end-to-end product design and development services for your business needs. Want to share some thoughts? Let us know.  

Five Problems of Hiring Freelancers

• Not getting the right match: Not finding the right candidate is one of the common problems faced while hiring freelancers. You may be looking for a test lead with more than 7 years of experience, but candidates with a mixed profile (less than 7 years, not having testing as one of their core skills) are all that you are getting. To make sure you’re hiring the right person for the job, reach out to an agency that has a qualified resource pool. They will allow you to take a screening test and also a personality test during or before the interview. This way, you can check if your future freelancer is likely to thrive as a remote worker.

• Lack of Commitment: This is probably the worst challenge of hiring a freelance resource. You can never expect the same level of commitment from a freelancer, as you would normally expect from a full-time employee. It is because of the short-term engagement you have with them, that they tend to look for greener pastures. The only solution to this is to look for dedicated resources from an outsourcing company. You will surely get remote workers committed to long-term projects. Expect better turnaround from them.

• Communication issues: Individual freelancers often take up multiple projects and communication becomes difficult. They work according to their own schedules and at times, as per their time zones. Communication for work is often very difficult, as they respond according to their own convenience. If you hire freelancers from an agency, you can clearly specify your conditions to make sure that the remote resource working for you works in tandem with your schedule.

• Payment Issues: This is actually a two-way issue. While most freelancers complain of being underpaid or not paid, you as a recruiter may find it less profitable to pay a handsome amount for a freelance resource who will contribute only a few hours per day for your project. If your resources are working from abroad, you might have to make international bank transfers. That will burn a hole in your pocket. It is better to avail financial services of companies like Payoneer, Skrill, or PayPal. Also, check if their offer is profitable enough for you as well as for your future freelance worker.

• Deadly Deadlines: Deadline is perhaps the most dreaded word if you are hiring a freelance resource. Unlike a regular full-time employee, a freelancer is almost always trying to balance two or three projects. These projects may again be different from each other, with different payment models. Quite often they happen to lose out time and miss the deadline for one project while trying to deliver the other on time. Chances are high that your project may be put away for when the freelancer has free time, or for when inspiration strikes them.

  The result? Missed deadlines. Not a pretty picture, is it? It is a better idea to hire offshore resources from an outsourcing partner that has dedicated resources for projects to work on. Also, if you’re outsourcing your work to unified freelance platforms, look up for reviews and policies they use for handling deadline issues.

Having considered the downsides of hiring freelancers, you need to look for alternatives. You may, therefore, talk to an outsourcing partner like us. Working with Pixel Solutionz, allows you to reap multiple benefits of working with freelancers, such as easy access to a large tech talent pool and lower labor costs, as well as the dedication of full-time resources. We help businesses from all over the world hire skilled software developers/designers/testers/content developers. When you contact us, all you need to do is specify the skills you’re looking for, and our recruiters will get back to you with matching candidate profiles. We also give you the liberty to manage your development team directly while we handle office management, HR, payroll, taxes, team retention. Like what you just read? Let us know.